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Murdoch's Latest Money Grab: Charge for Mobile Access to WSJ

Newspapers are finding themselves in tough economic circumstances, so it's no surprise that News Corp is dead set on monetizing their digital content, with CEO Rupert Murdoch recently saying that his company is planning to "charge for all our news websites."

In a somewhat surprising move, it turns out the monetization strategy is being applied to mobile consumption of content as well. Murdoch went on the record at a recent conference saying that WSJ readers should expect to pay $2/week for mobile content using the BlackBerry or iPhone WSJ application.

Application subscribers will be charged $2 per week, though subscribers to both print and online will not be charged extra. The charges are expected to be implemented sometime in the next few months, as Murdoch believes that "news is more valuable than ever."

$2/week is a hefty sum to pay for mobile news content consumption, especially given the number of free mobile news apps available on the iPhone alone (NPR has an amazing, free iPhone offering). According to paidContent, Murdoch mentioned that the pay-per-view model will also be applied to Hulu content as well, though specific details were not disclosed.

While we do support revenue models built around news, we're hard-pressed to believe that consumers will pay the $2/week subscription fee for iPhone or BlackBerry access to content. There's just too much competition in the mobile space to warrant the charge.

Will you pay $2/week for WSJ news on your iPhone or BlackBerry? Let us know in the comments.

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